The Big Five Personality Factors among Lebanese Chronic Disease Patients

Personality traits have long been known to contribute to disease states and disease progression. Several studies have been conducted on the links between personality traits and health outcomes. However, there is less focus on chronic illness. The aim of the present study was to explore the Big-Five (BF) personality traits in three groups of out-patients suffering from hypertension, diabetes, and receiving kidney dialysis (N = 157). They responded to the Arabic Big Five Personality Inventory. Results indicated that the only significant difference was in extraversion, in which the kidney dialysis patients obtained the high mean score. Compared with a Lebanese non-patient sample, studied previously, it was found that hypertension patients obtained a low extraversion mean score, whereas kidney dialysis patients had a high mean score on extraversion and agreeableness. The kidney patients, on the other hand, obtained the lowest mean score on conscientiousness. The most important result in this comparison was the high mean score on neuroticism among the three patient groups. Which probably means that their quality of life was impaired compared to healthy people because they had more negative emotions. Specific significant Pearson correlations were found between the BF traits. Principal components analysis extracted one components in the three groups of patients, which was labeled “General factor of personality”. It was concluded that chronic disease patients with high scores on neuroticism are in need of counseling or brief psychotherapy.